Heavens Lower East Side: The Price of A Heart

After being fired from his guardian angel gig, Teddy gets an assignment to help Bobby V, a detective in the Trench, track down somebody who dropped a human heart off a freeway overpass. His payoff is to learn why he himself got whacked and more importantly to Teddy, who did it.

Prologue - Wherein Teddy Gets Whacked

I had a great life before the bastards killed me. Two thumps in the chest. What they say is true, I never heard the shots. I’d been digging up dirt in a corporate fraud case, and I guess somebody had taken exception. The freakin’ cold started in my left big toe, just under the nail. Slow moving and chilling like nor’easters comin’ off Chesapeake Bay. I felt the bounce of the gurney being shoved into the ambulance and heard the slam of the doors, the chill now into my thighs.

I thought I heard a woman’s voice, fuzzy and distorted – I thought of Marianne Faithfull on a cheap sixties pocket transistor – “Nopreshure.”

Huh? I forced the tiny bones in my ears to focus.

“I can’t get a pressure. We’re losing him.”

Next thing I know, the bitch is pounding on me with a fist that’s hiding in a blue rubber glove.